Product Description

Robert Langdon, Harvard Professor of symbology, receives an urgent late-night call while in Paris: the curator of the Louvre has been murdered. Alongside the body is a series of baffling ciphers. Langdon and a gifted French cryptologist, Sophie Neveu, are stunned to find a trail that leads to the works of Da Vinci - and further. The curator, part of a secret society named the Priory of Sion, may have sacrificed his life to keep secret the location of a vastly important religious relic hidden for centuries. It appears that the clandestine Vatican-sanctioned Catholic sect Opus Dei has now made its move. Unless Landon and Neveu can decipher the labyrinthine code and quickly assemble the pieces of the puzzle, the Priory's secret - and a stunning historical truth - will be lost forever.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3519 in Books
• Published on: 2004-03-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 605 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
With The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown masterfully concocts an intelligent and lucid thriller that marries the gusto of an international murder mystery with a collection of fascinating esoterica culled from 2,000 years of Western history. A murder in the silent after-hours halls of the Louvre museum reveals a sinister plot to uncover a secret that has been protected by a clandestine society since the days of Christ. The victim is a high-ranking agent of this ancient society who, in the moments before his death, manages to leave gruesome clues at the scene that only his granddaughter, noted cryptographer Sophie Neveu, and Robert Langdon, a famed symbologist, can untangle.

The duo become both suspects and detectives searching not only for Neveu's grandfather's murderer, but also the stunning secret of the ages he was charged to protect. Mere steps ahead of the authorities and the deadly competition, the mystery leads Neveu and Langdon on a breathless flight through France, England and history itself. Brown has created a page-turning thriller that also provides an amazing interpretation of Western history. Brown's hero and heroine embark on a lofty and intriguing exploration of some of Western culture's greatest mysteries--from the nature of the Mona Lisa's smile to the secret of the Holy Grail. Though some will quibble with the veracity of Brown's conjectures, therein lies the fun. The Da Vinci Code is an enthralling read that provides rich food for thought. --Jeremy Pugh, Amazon.com

About the Author
Dan Brown is the bestselling author of Digital Fortress, Angels and Demons and Deception Point. He is a graduate of Amherst College and Phillips Exeter Academy, where he has taught English and creative writing. He lives in New England and can be found on the web at www.danbrown.com

Customer Reviews

AMAZING
best book i have ever read

thats all i can say

face-paced, well-described and full of twists and turns
you never know whats going to happen next

i personaly loved the characters and the way they were built up, i htough the book was jampacked with clever escapes and fabulous jinxes

a must read for ALL -
adults and teenagers

Utter Tripe
I read this only to find out how bad it is and it is very very bad indeed. I couldn't care less whether the supposed facts are fictitious but i don't believe i have ever read worse prose (H.P. Lovecraft at his worst could run him close though). It reads as though he had "how to write fiction" manual open beside him and many sentences made me laugh out loud. I despair that when hundreds of thousands of people decide to read they choose this. Brown before starting writing recorded an album of love songs sometime back in the 1990's, it may well be the worst pop album in history but he would make a better pop star than a novelist.

Not as good as I was lead to believe
I know that, with the 1000+ reviews this book has, this review is pretty pointless. But, for reasons explained by many other reviewers, I found this book absorbing, and the only thing that kept me turning the pages was so I could back up my arguments :D. I didn't find it to be difficult to tell what was going to happen, which wrecked the mystery element I was told it had. It, quite frankly, is written badly, which ruins it as a thriller. And Dan Brown is constantly adding random snippets of information in the form of flashbacks, something that constantly annoyed me as I didn't really want to hear about the main character teaching a classroom of children about things when I'm reading the "thrilling" bit. Just a bad read and waste of time.